Proper 19c—September 16, 2007

The Rev. Ellen Tillotson

 

            If last week’s assigned scriptures were stark and demanding, this week we have some better news, at least if you aren’t a Pharisee!  Last week we heard about the demands of following Jesus, about living up to the call of living for others, living our own faith by doing the hard work of community, of spending our efforts not for our selves alone, but for our brothers and sisters, and for the hurting world for which Christ died. 

            Chapter 15 in Luke, though, is all rejoicing, all about God’s desire and delight.  In the three parables that Jesus tells in this chapter (the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost—or prodigal—son) and the one he enacts by sharing meals with sinners, he shows a skeptical world a God who isn’t at all concerned about human self-importance or self-righteousness, but who welcomes and searches for the lost soul, the outcast, the marginal, the wastrel.  He says and shows that God is less interested in our goodness than in our hunger, our desire, less concerned about our performance than our presence at the table.  He tells the Pharisees that they are no more important to God (and I would remember no less important) than the sinners they condemn, and that there is a particular joy known when one of the lost and forsaken comes home.  In fact, I believe Jesus is inviting the Pharisees—the leaders of the people—to join the banquet of God’s love by joining the rejoicing angels instead of turning up their noses.  They are in danger of missing the banquet of God’s love by refusing to appreciate the other guests there.

            Because, Jesus says in these parables, God is an extravagant lover of God’s human children, One who will stop at nothing until every last person is welcomed, washed and warmed, to the feast of God’s realm of love.  God will leave ninety-nine fat and happy sheep to search for the lost one, will scour the room for the lost nickel. God has made us so that we can’t be whole without one another, so that we can’t really enjoy the banquet of God’s abundance—because it isn’t really abundance—until everyone is at the table. 

            This is indescribably good news for us when we are hurting or angry, lost or confused, frightened, or even just clueless.  God is searching for us, has left everything to find us and will not stop until we are brought home and the party can start!  And it presents a challenge to us when we are feeling strong and happy, when our own efforts are paying off, when our hard work is effective in cutting a path for us in a difficult world.  It means that, in those times, our challenge is to make sure the door is open and a place saved for those who aren’t in the room, who look in from the windows, who wait outside, hungry for something they may not even be able to name.  Because until they are here, the banquet isn’t ready to be served.  It challenges us to go in search of the lost, with God, to make room, make welcome, to bring in those we might be tempted to lock out.  Because God won’t serve up the full meal until everyone—everyone—is at the table.  It’ll just be hors d’ouvres  until then.

            I was reminded this week of the story of St. Bartholomew’s Church in New York, and its story in the last years.  When the current Rector, Bill Tully, came to St. Bart’s, it was on its last legs, a huge church basking in the faded glory of the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers who built it.  When I was there in the early eighties, the ushers wore morning coats and white gloves—or in later years severe dark suits, as if on guard against who might darken the doors.  By the 1990s the endowment of the church was all but gone, and it was likely to suffer the same fate as the dinosaurs—too big and too inflexible to adapt to a changing world.  Bill Tully wouldn’t let the church die, but reinvented it (in fact, St. Bart’s sponsors a conference every year called Reinventing Church) based on core ideas of what a Christian community should offer and be. 

            St. Bart’s now takes radical welcome as their motto, believing that the Church exists for the person who hasn’t found it yet, or who has been turned off or turned away by stuffy, off-putting behavior on the part of so called Christians.  We are in business not for those of here—though we are all welcome here, but for those still outside our doors, for those who may wander into church for the first time in twenty years or in  a lifetime.  Our job is to welcome and befriend them, no matter who they are, what they struggle with, how much money they make, what their skin color or education level is or whom they love or what they believe.  If they are searching, the church must be the place.

            It asserts that belonging comes before believing, especially in these times, that a welcome to a faith community that is open to questions, to searching, to honest doubts and deep questions is essential for both the faith community and for the searcher.  In fact, we are all searchers and, if some of us are certain about some things right now, they can pull along the rest of us until we know more deeply, or arrive at a place of assent.  But if we don’t, the table is still open to the questioner, the searcher, the doubter, the skeptic.  Belonging is more important than believing.

            St. Bart’s calls itself ‘Loose at the edges, solid at the core.”  The people study and come to know the essence of faithful Christian practice—prayer, silence, song, service, the work of community, the path of Christ in offering our lives for other’s wellbeing.  But it has porous edges, open to those who still aren’t sure about this Christianity stuff.   Our proclamation is ancient and deep; we have riches in abundance to share in two thousand years of Christian experience.  But still, everyone is welcome to taste of those riches and deepen in the life of faith. 

            This kind of church is more focused on Christian practice than it is on right believing; it asserts that we can pray and love our way into the fullness of Christ’s mission for the world, and that we won’t really know that fullness until we are practicing justice in our daily living, and stretching ourselves to works of compassion and mercy. 

            Last week in my sermon, I talked about some of the things we give so that this church community might thrive.  This week I want to just hit the highlights of what a ‘found’ life might look like

            We each need to do our own faith work, even while in community.  We need to wrestle and ponder the meaning of life and what the Christian faith says to the dilemmas and struggles we live through and observe.  We need, for ourselves, to grapple with evil and ask God the hard questions that keep us up in the middle of the night.  No one can do this work for you; no clergy person nor scholar can answer the questions in your heart; they can merely point the way to the answers of others and accompany you while you move toward your own place of faith.  You can’t be a Christian on anyone’s coattails, except those of Jesus, and even you have to figure out how to hang on for dear life to that coat.

            We need to commit ourselves to growing up into Christ, to a lifelong journey and lifelong learning.  We never ‘arrive’ at perfect faith, but must exercise it every day, work at it in each new situation we encounter.  We know that every stage of our life’s journey presents us with new questions, new lenses to look at the faith; so, too, we must consciously bring what we know of the faith today to the questions that will present themselves to us tomorrow. 

            And we must share with others in the Christian life.  Last week I talked some about how we make room and give way and exercise discipline for the sake of the life of this community of faith.  One can’t be a Christian alone—it is a shared experience, of communion with God and with our various brothers and sisters.  We must put our resources together, our voices raised in song, our talents and our time and yes, share our financial resources as we can so that this church family can carry good news to a starving world. 

            We must keep the door of our hearts open, and the doors of this church, to the newcomer, the searcher, the neighbor who might be starving for the banquet we share.  I read something this summer that said that Sundays in church must be mostly for the stranger, for the visitor and newcomer, and that those of us who know the riches of the Christian walk and of this community ought to shape our common life so that we have what we need during the week.  Sunday raises us up by worship, yes, but time with the clergy, sharing our sorrows and struggles, asking for support, checking in, needs to get done another time, or with other people.  Sundays our job—the job of all of us—is to look out for the stranger and the lost.  Yes, to support those who are truly needy and hurting among our church family, but mostly to make appointments to touch base as needed during the week.  In the weeks to come, you will see me less at the church door; I hope to be freed to search out the newcomers and visitors among us and try to make them welcome.  I hope many of you will join me in this joyful sharing of God’s welcome.  Hug each other; don’t line up only for a hug from me!   We have got to keep the edges of this community porous, permeable, welcoming to others. 

            Because the truth of the Christian faith is that it is a belonging faith, that God does indeed reach out to rope in every last child of earth to this banquet of love and abundance.  That we can never be whole without one another and the stranger we have not yet met.  We can never be whole alone.  AMEN

 

 

**The story of St. Bartholomew’s Church in New York was ‘nudged’ from an article in Synthesis, a weekly publication for preachers.